M-Sport Member Spotlight​

Charles Wheatley

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Our Travel Office is a busy and important department here at M-Sport. Here we chat to Charles Wheatley, our Travel Coordinator, and discover more about one third of the team responsible for our flights, hotels and transfers.

 

The Travel Office is one our busiest departments, but what do you do as a Travel Coordinator?

We book flights, accommodation, car hires and airport transfers. It sounds really simple when you put it like that, but it’s a lot more complex in reality.

I guess the first thing to say is that it’s more than just the rallies and there are a lot of other trips happening that people may not know about.

I actually had no idea how many other trips we go on – test trips, development trips, SIM testing trips in America, and that’s just the rally side! We also have teams travelling for BTCC as well as the Mustang and Ranger projects.

And then on top of that there are also customer engineering trips and any accommodation that might be required for new starters and trialists.

So when you add it all up it’s a pretty big task.

 

You’ve not always worked in the Travel Office, where were you before and how did you come to this role?

I’ve been with the team just over a year now. I came here having retuned to the UK after living in New Zealand and spent the first nine months of my M-Sport career in the Sales Office.

That was a great learning experience for me. I’ve always had an interest in motorsport but didn’t have the technical background so that role provided a great opportunity to learn all the parts and get a stronger hold on the technical side of the sport.

It also meant that I got to know everyone in the various departments which certainly helped when moving into the Travel Office as I already knew who everyone was and what they specialised in.

As for how I came to be in the Travel Office, it was as simple as putting my name forward. I saw we were advertising for the role, and thought it would be well suited to me with the skills I gained in my previous employment.

 

You mentioned previous employment, tell us a bit about what you did before coming to M-Sport?

Coming to M-Sport was a complete career change for me and prior to joining the team I was actually working in the bike industry – be that cycle tours in and around Europe and then wholesale bike sales in New Zealand.

So if someone wanted to ride a stage of the Tour de France for example, I could tailor a trip that would allow them to cycle Alpe d’Huez on the weekend and be back in the office to tell everyone about it on Monday.

I also used to do a lot of bike race support – so if someone wanted to do one of the bigger races in Europe we would plan everything for them: their travel, hotels, bike maintenance, everything so that they could just turn up and focus on the race.

Most tours were in France and Italy, some in Belgium, but my favourite was probably a tour I organised along Norway’s Atlantic Ocean Road which is basically just a series of bridges amongst the fjords. That was pretty mega, although I was living in Italy at the time so the drive there with all the equipment was longer than the trip itself!

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How many different countries have you lived in?

I’m definitely counting Wales as a separate country; so that’s Wales, the Canary Islands, Switzerland, Italy, New Zealand and now England – six!

The Canary Islands was probably my favourite with the nice weather and relaxed atmosphere. I only lived 10 minutes from work but it would take me hours to get home as I was always bumping into people and stopping for a chat and a coffee.

As for New Zealand, I was only supposed to be there nine months. I always wanted to go there and decided to make it my last trip before coming home and settling down with a proper job – but it turned into four years, mainly because of Covid and my choosing to stay there during the pandemic.

 

What’s your favourite thing about your job, and what’s the most challenging?

Another thing people might not necessarily realise is that an event team isn’t just made up of people from here in Dovenby. There are a variety of different people from a variety of different places, and they all travel on different days for different roles.

Getting everyone there and making everything fit together like a big jigsaw is extremely challenging, but also quite fulfilling. It’s problem solving essentially, and I quite like that. So my favourite thing is also the most challenging thing!

 

Any hobbies outside of work?

I like hiking, kayaking, skiing – just getting out and about outdoors which the Lake District is perfect for.

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And in terms of career development, what’s next, what’s the plan?

I usually have a big plan of where I’d like to head to next, but at the moment I’m very happy here. I certainly hope to be with M-Sport for many years – I love the area and have bought a house here, so I’m quite settled in that respect. Hopefully I can keep growing in the role I’m in – learning more and doing more in the Travel Office.